Stay or Go?

There's a bit of heartburn going on about Afghanistan these days. We've been there for 8 years. Shouldn't there have been some progress by now? Well, a large part of the problem was that this particular war got back-burnered while some crazy person launched a second war with some other person because our crazy person wanted revenge on behalf of his daddy. Hard to make sense of that, but it's true. So we wasted people, money energy and everything else to invade a country and hoped that this war would somehow take care of itself. Afghanistan has been invaded many times, but it's never really been conquered. It's got geography working in its favtor that way. So having exhausted ourselves in one war, it's understandable that there is a lot of reluctance to recommitting ourselves to that first war, the one we probably should have been working harder on. There's little end in sight, but there's more wasting of people, money and everything else going on.

Unlike Iraq, I think the US does need to be in this country and in force. It's not time to talk exit strategy yet. But it's definitely time to start talking strategy. There election was a joke. They need to a functional government to stablize the country and the whole region. The ballots were carried by donkies. There are no quick answers here.